Trash to Treasure: Even Garbage Deserves a Second Chance

Here are seven inspiring videos of people turning trash to treasure.

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Art de Trash?

We are very much aware of recycling’s benefits when it comes to the planet, but what about how it can enrich us spiritually and artistically? It might sound odd—after all, trash is trash—but while most people see the act of recycling as a weekly or daily chore, these seven artists view it as a platform of discovery, expression and yes, even love.

From cello-playing dumpster divers to eclectic jewelry designers and surfboard creators, these seven videos might just inspire you to turn trash to treasure.

Photo: YouTube

The Landfill Harmonic

Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Cateura, Paraguay, where young musicians play instruments made from trash.

Hailing from a slum built on top of a landfill—and where a violin is worth more than a house—these young musicians are proof positive that investing in people as much as recycling can foster love and creativity.

Photo: Vimeo

Street Art: Joshua Allen Harris’ Inflatable Bag Monsters

Artist Joshua Allen Harris reuses NYC subway exhaust venting up from steel grates to create kinetic art installations. Using only tape and garbage bags, Harris creates giant inflatable animals that become animated when fastened to a sidewalk grate. The result? “Part of the magic of it,” says Harris “is that it looks like trash on the street, and then it becomes animated and comes to life.” This life and death (inflation and deflation) of street creatures and animals is an artistic reminder of life, and of course a big nod to trash reuse.

Photo: YouTube

Mount Everest 8848 Art Project

Peaceful, majestic Mount Everest. At 29,035-feet tall, this "goddess of the sky" was first ascended on May 29, 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary. Since then, roughly 3,400 more hikers have summited the mountain. Besides attaining bragging rights for their climb, many leave their bad manners behind in the form of trash. In this video, Mt Everest 8848 Art Project, we get to see their trash turned into artistic treasure. The Telegraph reports that a group of artists have collected eight tons of trash from the mountain—including the remains of a helicopter—and turned it “into works of art and sculptures to highlight the issue of littering on the slopes of Everest.” They also report it took 65 porters and 75 yaks to carry down the rubbish from the mountain over two spring expeditions. Talk about dedication.

Photo: Vimeo

HA Schult’s Trash People

“We produce trash, are born from trash, and will go back to trash,” says artist Ha Schult. To try and emphasize growing waste levels in the world, the Trash People were created by HA Schult in the late 1990s from electronic waste and metal cans.

Schult’s Trash People is a breathtaking collection of 1,000 “people” formed out of items we bin on a daily basis—old computers, tin cans and assorted plastic pieces.

Eurocell writes: “Requiring more than 6 months and a team of 30 assistants to complete, these Trash People have traveled the world, popping up alongside magnificent monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza, or dotted along the Great Wall of China.”

“Today’s Coca-Cola bottle is the Roman archaeological find of tomorrow. The pyramids of the present are the garbage dumps,” said Schult in 1999.

This video proves his point.

Photo: YouTube

Caine’s Arcade

You’re a nine year-old kid, you’re an entrepreneur, and one day a filmmaker comes across your arcade made entirely of discarded boxes from your dad’s auto parts shop.

Photo: Vimeo

Freunde von Freunden, Featuring Sue Webster and Tim London

“One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure.”

East London artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble have been constructing and assembling sculptures from unconventionally found objects into transformative art. In their work, solitary chairs, discarded Christmas trees, and “splinters of wood” become “Shadow Work”—all of which are truly mind-blowing.

Portablewrites: “The rhetoric of Webster and Noble, as they talk about the merging of two art forms in their infamous shadow series, duly promotes such sparks of creativity; of seeing beauty and artistic form in the most ordinary objects. If nothing else, this interview with the pair will make you look twice at the objects around you, seeing potential in the discarded and beauty in the trash.”

Agreed.

Photo: Vimeo

One Beach

Barefoot Wine and the Surfrider Foundation have been working together for years to keep beaches “barefoot friendly.” Inspired by the creatives that have worked to transform trash to treasure and keep ocean education alive, this 24-minute film is a tribute to people, place and planet—all woven into a love story.

With a big focus on plastic and its positive and negative impacts on the ocean as well as everyday life, One Beach forces us to take ownership over all our single uses, need for convenience and a perceived “need” that oftentimes outweighs common logic.

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TakePart is the digital news and lifestyle magazine from Participant Media, the company behind such acclaimed documentaries as CITIZENFOUR, An Inconvenient Truth, and Food, Inc. and feature films including Lincoln and Spotlight.